John Munson/The Star-LedgerWayne Hills football coach Chris Olsen, whose team will be trying for the school's eighth state championship tonight at MetLife Stadium, has come under fire for his handing of nine players who face charges of assault.

There is one indisputable fact about Chris Olsen: His football teams win.

But the rest of what defines him is more complex.

The Chris Olsen you don’t know is the Wayne Hills football coach who once checked up on his players from his sickbed after suffering an infection near his heart. Or the coach who’s so strict he’ll drive around Wayne searching for curfew violators, but so silly he’ll remove his false teeth to get a laugh from his players.

Olsen’s legacy has evolved from building winning programs throughout a head-coaching career that started in 1978 and has taken him to four schools. That is one of the few hardened truths about him.

“He’s the kind of person who will demand that you demand the best of yourself,” said Anthony Paruta, who played for Olsen at Wayne Hills from 1995-98. “He’s got a bunch of kids who aren’t the best athletes every year. Let’s be serious. It’s Wayne, not Don Bosco.

“If it wasn’t for Chris Olsen, they’d probably be a .500 team. But they’re playing to the best of their abilities because they don’t want to let him down,” Paruta said.

Tonight at MetLife Stadium, Wayne Hills will play for an eighth state championship. The game against Old Tappan comes amid a controversy that began in late October when the nine players were accused of beating two students from crosstown Wayne Valley High School, one of whom was left unconscious and lying in a roadway.

None of the nine will play tonight after acting state Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf on Friday upheld an earlier ruling by the Wayne Board of Education that the players be suspended.

The case is the latest chapter in a controversial career that has made Olsen, 59, such a polarizing figure.

“Character is what you are,” Olsen said this week, speaking in general terms while refusing to talk specifically about the players’ suspensions. “Reputation is what people think you are. Worry about your character is what I tell our kids. … What does your family think of you? What do your close friends think of you? What are you really? That’s your character. That does not reflect on my character at all.”

“That was the plan, and it’s worked at every school,” said longtime friend Ted Sobota, who has been Olsen’s assistant coach at every stop.

But there’s also been plenty of controversy.

Olsen’s first job came in 1978 at St. Cecilia in Englewood, the school where Vince Lombardi began his coaching career.

In two seasons — while washing the showers and cleaning the locker rooms — he revived a fallen program and took the team to the state semifinals.

But he was abruptly fired — Olsen says it was because the principal told him that the school was not able to devote enough resources to football.

“It’s one of those things where you think everything is going well, but you never know,” Sobota said.

Four years at Bergenfield followed, where his teams made two playoff appearances and won a state championship. In 1984, he was lured to Paterson Eastside, where his success was not measured in victories. Those were sparse. Rather, it was measured in other ways. He took a barren, depleted program and built a foundation for the future. Under Olsen, Eastside produced two future NFL players.

But his tenure was short and ended poorly. According to published reports at the time, he was dismissed, in part, for playing 39 academically ineligible students and for challenging famed principal Joe Clark’s authority.

“Absolutely lies,” said Olsen, who maintains he was let go because he refused to fire four assistant coaches when Clark asked him to bring in black coaches so they could serve as role models for the players and better match Paterson’s demographics.

Clark admits he bowed to community pressure to force Olsen’s hand and, ultimately, let him go.

“During my entire professional career, I never permitted adversarial forces to sway me in any direction,” Clark said this past week. “I state tragically at that point I encountered and succumbed.”

He could not recall, however, whether Olsen ever used ineligible players.

“I would be hard-pressed to say that Chris Olsen was privy to using individuals who were ineligible,” Clark said. “I just don’t see that happening. That would not be part of his character that I knew.”

• • •

After taking a year off from coaching, Olsen arrived at Wayne Hills in 1987, despite objections from some friends who told him to pass on the job, assuming a better one would come along.

Today, there are few better football teams in the state. Under Olsen, the Patriots won their first state title in 2002. They then won five in a row, from 2004 to 2008, and again in 2010.

Along the way, Olsen, who has been the school’s athletic director for the past year and a half, has built a program some colleges would envy — and not just because of all the state titles. He has a fervent base of parents and alumni with generous checkbooks. Last April, the school locker rooms underwent $97,000 in renovations — at no cost to the district.

But the player suspensions are just the latest controversy to come his way.

Interim Superintendent Michael Roth initially said the players could not be suspended because the school had no jurisdiction over incidents that occur off-campus. That allowed the nine to play in Wayne Hills’ first-round playoff game.

Roth later reversed his decision, citing a further review of case law. But after a contentious public meeting, which was attended by Olsen and most of the football team dressed in their jerseys, the Wayne school board voted to temporarily stay the superintendent’s decision. As a result, the nine accused players were allowed to play in the second round of the playoffs.

On Nov. 25, the board unanimously ruled the nine would not be allowed to play in the state final. Cerf upheld that decision Friday.

Along the way, some in town felt the players were being given special treatment. Others argued that the nine should be allowed to play, saying not allowing them to play would violate their rights to due process.

There have been other problems for Olsen during his quarter-century at Wayne Hills.
In 1998, he was suspended for five games by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association for two separate violations.

First, he paid two volunteer coaches by collecting money from his assistant coaches in a manner that was found to be coercive. The coaches were hired without background checks and one was found to have been charged with drug possession.

Then, the NJSIAA found, Olsen had let his then 11-year-old son, Christian, play quarterback in a Wayne Hills scrimmage.

“I truly, truly don’t believe it was a big deal,” he said of letting his son participate in the August scrimmage. “That field is my workplace, and I didn’t do anything different than any other father doesn’t do with his kid.”

• • •

The Olsen family has football in its veins.

Olsen’s oldest son, Christian, a quarterback, played for Virginia. His middle son, Greg, a tight end, starred for Miami, became a first-round NFL draft pick and is now with the Carolina Panthers. His youngest, Kevin, a junior at Wayne Hills, plays quarterback for the Patriots and is garnering looks from top Division 1 schools.

And yet, for a man who says he doesn’t have a regret in 25 years at Wayne Hills, there is some disappointment.

“Between the two of them, there’s probably been 100-some games,” Olsen said. “I’ve probably gone to — between Chris at Virginia and Greg at Miami — I’ll bet you I went to 10-12 games (at) most.”

There are some who believe he’ll retire once Kevin graduates, though Olsen dismisses that notion. After all, he says, folks said the same thing when Christian and Greg finished high school.

The plan, he says, is to keep going until it’s not fun anymore.

• • •

Gruff and powerful is the only image many have of Olsen.

There is little denying he is intense.

“They’re 100 percent right,” Olsen acknowledged.

Or that he may sometimes be too intense.

“And they may be 100 percent right,” he said.

After a game in 1991, Olsen told reporters that the referees should be “castrated” and “die in hell.” He was fined by the NJSIAA.

“You kind of see him as a grumpy old coach that has a red face for most of the game, and that’s not the Chris that I know,” said Joe Ascolese, the former Wayne Hills athletic director.

His players know him as a strict disciplinarian.

Olsen says he expects more from his players than anyone else. He demands excellence from them in the classroom, and his team rules are more wide-reaching than the school’s. If a player violates curfew, for example, it’s grounds for a one-game suspension.

“As a coach, I think you kind of look at him almost like a father figure,” said Tom Lyons, who played at Wayne Hills from 1995-98. “He’s hard on you when he has to be, but he really pats you on the back. He’s got your back if you need him to have your back. I really have the utmost respect for him. I think that some of the success that I’ve had in life can be attributed to what he taught me. Not just about football, but about being a man. He takes kids and he makes them men.”

As the perceptions of Olsen remain as divided as the community, he’s comfortable in his own skin.